The language called Sanna in their local dialect, is the Arabic dialect spoken by Cypriot Maronites in

Cyprus. Historically, this language had a stronghold in Northwest Cyprus, Kormakiti and three other
villages. Between the 9th and 12th centuries, Maronites from Syria and/or Lebanon left the mainland to
venture to another land, most likely to escape religious prosecution. The language has evolved its own
peculiarities and is distinct from other types of Levantine Arabic. It shares many features with Maltese,
in that it borrowed many modern-day terms from the dominating language (Greek), whereas Maltese
borrowed from Sicilian Italian.
The language has retained many of the original sounds spoken in Classical Arabic. The language still
has distinction between the different types of s, /s/ and /s/, both /t/ and /t/, some of the many guttural
sounds /h/ and /x/ and even all the sounds related to /d/, //, and // (the last two sounds pronounced as
th in English), respectively. Dialectally speaking, Borg classifies the language as being closest to the
Arabic dialects spoken in Aleppo, Syria and Southern Turkey (Borg, 2004). This derived dialect is
generally known as Northern Mesopotamian Arabic. Throughout the centuries, CMA continued to have
even more change, introducing new sounds such as Greek's ps, a transformation of the consonant /q/
to /g/. CMA shares some features with other Levantine Arabic dialects in the way that it expresses the
present progressive with the preposition bi, meaning in, through, followed by the general present
tense, e.g. p-axup-ak - in-I love-you. A lot of times in the present progressive tense especially, a /k/
will follow the preposition before the verb, if the main verb stem starts in certain consonants, e.g. xpa
- to weep, cry, p+k+yixpi - he is weeping.
Historically, the Cypriot Maronites practice a very old form of Christianity, and as a result of that, a lot
of the borrowed terms, stem from Aramaic. The environment they live in, isolated from contemporary
Arabic dialects paved the way for Cypriot Maronites to continue the use of old Aramaic-derived words.
Much of the terminology used from Aramaic, deal with agriculture, religious and household topics.
Some examples of this Aramaic influence in CMA are CMA api - thick vegetation, Old Aramaic
abe - thick, dense; CMA kaes - good, Old Aramaic kayyis - sharp, quick-intellect. This
lexicon, kaes/kayyis in contemporary Arabic dialects is kwayyis today, the diminutive form of
kaes/kayyis (Borg, 2004)
The tragedy happened in 1974, after nearly a thousand years of quietude and a tranquil Maronite life,
the Turkish military invades their villages, as well as the whole northern part of Cyprus. The effects
from this invasion can still be felt today, as the Turkish army was very reluctant to let anyone visit their
families until 2003 (Makris, 2010). The population, which once had as many as 2,000 full-time
residents is now only around 100 older speakers, sometimes the population swells up to 5-700 when
relatives go back to visit their families.
The problems that are affecting this community are the approach they have taken toward making
resources available. The fact that there still is no agreed-upon or standardized writing system available,
makes the situation more volatile. Most Cypriot Arabic speakers who do write in CMA, use the Latin
alphabet, although the CMA grammar book uses only the Greek alphabet for transcribing CMA words.
All that is available for learning the language is a 400 page book about CMA/Sanna grammar, 11
newspaper publications and a comparative glossary with other Arabic dialects/Aramaics equivalents of

the roots provided (Borg, 2004). Although there is an immersion program for young children, funded
by the Greek Cyprus government and the UN (Makris, 2010), this is not enough to save the language.
Lets take this scenario, a 14-year old child (whose parents do not speak CMA/Sanna) goes to Sanna
immersion camp one summer and is eager to learn the language fluently. Say he understands Greek, so
the grammar book isnt too difficult for him to learn some sentences, words, and basic grammar.
However, he wants to learn how to speak the language fluently, and write poetry, so he needs a
dictionary. Unless he is a linguist and/or knows the Semitic system of trilateral/quadrilateral roots (e.g.
y-s-gh to hear), he will not be able to look up a word easily in English, or even in Greek for that
matter, hed have to scourge the book for the word he needed or rely on find-and-search methods in a
text search on a book reader. On top of that, there are a good amount of Cypriot Maronites living in
South Africa, Europe, and the US and the essential materials are only available in Greek. The amount
of printed material that is solely written in CMA/Sanna is only 11 publications of Ash Xabar, some
with Greek translations.
How can one expect a child to learn the language fluently if the resources needed to learn, to
implement the language in the household are all linguist-centered or in a language that they are not
familiar with? It is not too late to save this language from complete and utter destruction, there is still a
village where it is spoken, and a native speaker aspires to release a CMA-Greek and a CMA-English
dictionary, but according to Makris, this was five years ago (Makris, 2010).
This is why I have taken it upon myself to do what I possibly can and save this language. I have
contacted the Maronite press to talk to them about publishing more newspapers, and an elder reached
out to me. Although itll be painstakingly hard to implement schools that teach all subjects in
CMA/Sanna, it will be possible to at least computationally bring their language to the forefront and
increase expression, and written material in the language. I hope that I can build a English<>CMA
dictionary with audio for each entry, providing easy access for any speaker of English, an annotated
corpus with words marked for grammar particles, and a speech-to-text system that would help them
bring Sanna into the 21st century.